


Red Skies Painted in Smoke

by AmateurScribes



Series: Bad Things Happen (to Grif) Bingo [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Damaged Vocal Chords, Dissociation, Emetophobia, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Massacred Colony Survivor Grif, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, mentions of vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 19:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15936473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmateurScribes/pseuds/AmateurScribes
Summary: Grif wakes up to red skies and smoke.He has nothing to say about the deaths of his fellow soldiers.He'll have nothing to say for avery long time.





	Red Skies Painted in Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> Here's another piece for my Bad Things Bingo Board! I know I'm pretty slow at getting these done, but I guarantee that I will eventually get to every prompt! And since I wanna complete the board, I'm always taking prompts! I hope y'all enjoy!

Sweat rakes across his face as adjusts the straps of his backpack. The canteen of water clangs against the other  _ empty _ canteen as he continues to amble forwards. The crack in his visor doesn't do much to obscure his vision and he continues to hold the rag up against the lower half of his face. 

The skies had been blood red for a few days now and the smoke hasn't puttered out, still going strong, emitting from the turned over and destroyed Warthogs.

Occasionally he has to sidestep one of the bodies strewn upon the ground.

But he keeps moving. He keeps moving past the other soldiers with plasma burns across their faces or the ones with twin holes through their chests. He keeps moving past the aliens with bullet holes all over their chests and the ones with their heads cracked open against the ground.

He just keeps walking.

He has a mission to fulfill, he has to go into the city and find some form of communication that can go outside of the colony. The radio towers back at the base were the first things taken out when the Covenant came. 

The soldiers who were stationed there were lying dead against the control panels anyways.

He presses the rag harder against his face. The smell of burned and charred bodies started to get more common the closer he got to the city. The trail was dirtied by blood and vomit from where a few other soldiers weren't killed immediate, throwing up before passing out in a combination of blood and whatever was left in their stomachs.

Looking at one of the soldiers- the kid didn't even look like he was old enough to buy a fucking  _ beer- _ Grif felt his own stomach clench at the reminder that he wasn't only one fucked over by the UNSC.

The attack was unexpected, and he had missed the entire thing. He had fallen asleep at his post, and somehow through all the carnage, he hadn't woken up. 

It was only hours afterward did the lingering smell of smoke wake him up, in a panic, he thought he was back on Earth. Back in his dingy apartment taking care of Kai, worrying whenever she tried to use the stove to make breakfast or lunch or dinner. She'd always managed to burn whatever it was that she was making, and if Grif didn't hurry to stop her and turn off the stove then the fire alarms would get set off, and that was a whole ordeal in of itself.

So he jerked awake blindly looking around, waiting for his baby sister to come running to him begging him to not get mad at her because she burned the food again. 

All he came face to face with was a wide-eyed soldier with half his face caved in. The single green eye stared listlessly at Grif, his pistol still in his hand.

Scrambling backward only made him fall onto a dead alien body, leaking dark blue blood that was smeared all over his hands.

He only found more bodies in the base. 

He only found more bodies outside the base.

He only found more bodies on the road leading to the city.

He only found  _ more bodies. _

The 'Welcome to Tantalus' sign on his way to the city was blown up, he couldn't even read what was left of it. 

Grif was close to the city now, but the smoke only got worse and the red skies didn't change into a much more natural color.

His eyes started to water and he pressed the rag as tightly as he could, but he could start to feel the back of his throat start to tingle and itch. His shoulders shook slightly as he coughed lightly into the rag.

He could hardly see what was in front of him but he felt the air around him broiling. He felt it on his skin, what was exposed of it at least, and more sweat dragged across his forehead, rolling down his cheeks into the rag. 

He tried to keep his eyes open as much as he could but it got too much for him and he scrunched them closed. 

His skin felt like it was on fire, and his shoulders continued to shake, and he knew he should stop moving so long as he kept his eyes closed, but he didn't because he had a mission to complete.

There should be still working radio towers in the city, he just needed to get to them and contact the UNSC to get him off this goddamn hell planet. 

Sweat continued to roll down his face, and his eyes were still closed, and all he could think about was finding a way to get off the colony.

He was still walking when he tripped over  _ something _ and felt the rag slip away from his face for just a second as his eyes flickered open.

Through tears he saw debris everywhere- steel beams smoldering and sticking out of the ground, crumbling bricks that no longer form  _ anything, _ wooden splintered and tossed about, and about a hundred other things that used to make up  _ the city. _

And the tears that slipped down his face wasn't from the heat or the smoke or anything like that.

The tears were from pure fucking  _ agony because there was no goddamn city anymore. _

There was no goddamn radio tower.

There were no goddamn bodies for him to find.

There was no one alive of this fucking colony.

Ripping the rag away from his face he breathes in the smoke, his shoulders shaking with grief and anger and  _ with the unfairness of it all. _

The small coughs turned into hacking that cause his whole body to shudder from the pain.

There are no words. He has  _ nothing to fucking say. _

But he screams. He lets his roars fill the silence of the still smoldering city, choking on his own grief and the poisonous fumes in between.

He screams and screams and screams until he can't scream anymore.

His throat feels as though it went through a blender, and every cough that bursts it way out causes him to wheeze and heave. He wants to scream more but nothing comes out but his own coughing.

Tears continue to fall, dropping quickly as he pounds his fist into the metal beam next to him. They glitter with specks of glass that break away from the crack in his visor.

Grif starts to feel light headed when he hears something break through the atmosphere. His vision is tunneling in and out with smoke streaking across, and he still gasps and wheezes and heaves.

He's starting to pass out when he feels hands grab at his shoulders, pulling off his backpack and placing a gas mask over his face. 

By the time he wakes up, he's in a UNSC hospital. He's not conscious and his lips are dry and his skin is still scorched and he feels like shit.

And he opens his mouth to croak out something.

But he says nothing.

He tries to say anything.

But he says nothing.

Grif's only half paying attention to the UNSC doctor as he explains the irreparable damage down to his vocal chords and to his lungs and how he's  _ lucky to be alive with how much smoke he inhaled. _

Grif's only half paying attention when UNSC officials inform him that he's being transferred _ \- drafted- _ into something called the Red Army.

Grif's only half paying attention when he meets that mess of a human being in maroon armor during Basic Training.

He doesn't say anything, and Maroon must think that his disinterested grunts were an invitation to stick with him and to talk and talk and  _ talk. _

They get transferred to the same outpost, and somehow that means that they were friends. 

He doesn't say anything when one day Maroon turns to him to ask, "Do you ever wonder why we're here?"

Time just seems to pass him by, and he's not even aware for most of it. The Sargent seemed to think his silence was a form of disobedience and rebellion, so Grif somehow becomes the punching bag of the team.

He doesn't say anything to the new recruit seconds before he's run over by a tank.

He doesn't say anything to anybody and  _ no one understands why. _

They don't question it, they don't look into it, they just accept it as  _ Grif being on a long-term strike against the UNSC. _

And it's frustrating during the times when he's aware enough to be angry at the world and angry at the UNSC and  _ angry at himself most of all. _

But most of the days pass by in a blur.

He doesn't say anything.

Because he can't.

Because even if he could he has nothing to say.

And most of the days pass by in a blur and he's not even aware of half of what's going on with the Reds or the Blues or any of their mindless fights.

He's not aware of the rogue AI jumping from person to person.

He's only aware of a small tingle at the back of his head, but it feels as if something has  _ finally clicked back into place. _

And he thinks about how much he hates every single one of the bastards who led to him being without a voice. He feels his usual simmering anger jump to an inferno.

And suddenly the thoughts that he's been thinking are finally  _ being said after so goddamn long. _

His shoulders start to shake as a grin stretches across his face. 

He's laughing maniacally, but he's not aware of the deep tone of it- not aware of the slightly electronic hum behind it.

He mouths the words, and he knows he shouldn't be able to speak but he  _ does. _

He's still laughing as he boasts, "Now we're  _ talking, you fools." _

**Author's Note:**

> The original idea I had for this prompt was way different then what it ended up being! Since I don't think I'll get to write the original idea in the future, I'll just give a brief idea of what it was going to end up being. 
> 
> It was going to take place during Grif's time alone on Iris during S15, and he would have screamed himself hoarse that he wouldn't have been able to talk for a _very_ long time. He still meets up with Locus to save the Reds and Blues, but later during their attack on the volcano base, Simmons becomes suspicious that he might be a doppelganger and he wouldn't be able to prove that he wasn't. It doesn't end nicely...
> 
> My Tumblrs are: @agent-murica (main and where I'm accepting prompts) and @amateurscribes (writing).


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